Your data will get stolen if you trust Equifax.

Andreas M. Antonopoulos@aantonopThe Equifax service to check if your data was compromised requires you to opt-out of class action against them This is how a cartel acts

September 8 2017

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Your data will get stolen if you trust the government.

Yes, the photo below is real, I still have the letter.

In a previous life (this was circa 2015) I considered working for the government. I went through a rigorous background investigation and had all my data stolen because some dude thought it was a good idea to use public WiFi in Southeast Asia.

The only way an organization can secure your data is if they don’t collect it in the first place.

It is ridiculous to even think that a startup is going to be able to secure your data when a national intelligence agency can’t secure the details of my background investigation.

This includes cryptocurrency related startups like Coinbase and Binance and every crack pot ICO you’ve every heard of.

The price of losing privacy

Andreas Antonopoulos has a great talk about the price of losing privacy and I’m going to try to summarize the main points here.

The problem with privacy is that the implications of losing your privacy are not immediately apparent ( i.e., you can lose your privacy today, but go to jail in 6 years because of something in your browsing history ).

To “let a hundred flowers blossom,” which was the idea of openness to allow the explosion of creative expression. Even those of dissidents.

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.

Mao Zedong

The Chinese intelligentsia were invited to criticize the political system in Communist China.

And people believed it.

And their opinions were carefully recorded and cataloged.

And then the purge happened, and hundreds of thousands of folks who believed the idea were murdered.

You lose your privacy everyday but you don’t pay the price for that perhaps until a lot later and you can’t immediately identify the moment at which your loss of privacy goes from something that is an inconvenience to something that is a deadly risk.

Andreas Antonopoulos

Bitcoin is consumer protection

It is very difficult to overlay identity on top Bitcoin. Which is good, because no one knows how to secure data.

Your internet identity may be compromised, but you should atleast try to be vigilant of folks trying to steal your Bitcoin financial data.

Regulators have failed to protect consumers. Bitcoin protects consumers by putting control in the hands of the consumers themselves.

An alarm should go off in your head anytime you hear words like “Know-your-customer (KYC)” or “ Anti-money laundering (AML).”

Here’s an example:

Blockchain@blockchainUPDATE: Our Stellar (XLM) Airdrop is active and in progress! Already signed up for the waitlist? You should be receiving an email shortly with next steps. Verified your profile and waiting for your Airdrop? It shouldn’t be much longer.

November 28 2018

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Last month Stellar announced they’re airdropping $125 million to Blockchain wallet users. No big deal right?

Just one condition, you need to KYC.

The problem here is that Airdrops come at the expense of privacy.

Udi Wertheimer [#wumbo]@udiWertheimerToday @blockchain.info came up with a new idea: go through a KYC process with your wallet account, potentially holding 7 years of Bitcoin transaction history, to get $25 worth of some random penny stock. Please don’t do this. If you want $25-worth of $XLM for some reason, buy it

November 6 2018

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Would you trade potentially 7 years of Bitcoin transaction history for $25?

The idea that a bitcoin exchange or some crypto startup is going to secure your KYC/AML and all of your privately identifiable information is a joke.

Like I said before, It is ridiculous to even think that a startup is going to be able to secure your data when a national intelligence agency can’t secure the details of my background investigation.

With Bitcoin, only YOU can de-anonymize yourself

You de-anonymize yourself when you associate a bitcoin addresses with an exchange, or a merchant that does KYC, or a shipping address, or your name, etc…